There is a difference between the laws changing and affecting future behavior and a change being applied retroactively.

An earlier message indicated that the money was being put in escrow because apparently there is still a dispute about how the law should have been applied in the past.

I think it is reasonable to be upset about after-the-fact changes to the application of a law/regulation.

There is

Still legal

Nations built on laws, right?

Just because a particular entities economics position, which has no legal protections enshrined in any national constitutions or political or social theories I know of (economics are economics, not political science), are impacted by that. Welp; nations of laws and legal processes

Downvote with all your ad hominem might all you want. Facts are facts.

Hard to follow you, but the process of law making has its own meta rules that we can talk about and that shape the nature of the resulting legal system. Responding to attempts to discuss these meta rules with "it is the law" is basically a category error, you're avoiding the meta discussion.

For example:

  • laws shouldn't be drafted to apply to a single person (bill of attainder)
  • laws shouldn't be applied retroactively (ex post facto)
  • laws shouldn't infringe on individual rights

I don't know enough about the EU/Irish law to be definitive about what is going on with Apple, but my gut says that the law was probably targeted such that few corporations could take advantage of it but not so much that it was just Apple and that the EU enforcement action should not be applied retroactively.